Ohio Enshrines Abortion Rights, Bolstering an Undeniable Trend in American Politics

Ohio voters enshrined abortion protections in their state constitution on Tuesday, on an off-year Election Day that once again showed the staying power of reproductive rights as a galvanizing issue for Americans.

The vote was part of a pattern of recent victories for abortion rights in red states, and an indication of what will motivate voters in the 2024 general election. The earlier referendum votes that rejected abortion restrictions in other states—including the deeply red states of Kansas and Kentucky—rode a wave of anger in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2023. Tuesday’s outcome indicated that the issue will remain salient, to say the least.

But the vote in Ohio was also its own specific, drawn-out battle. This past summer, money poured into the state for a special election that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution. That special election was very clearly intended to hamper the November abortion-rights effort—and though conservatives tried several forms of fear-mongering to get it passed—voters didn’t take the bait.

They rejected the proposal resoundingly, leaving a pathway for a vote on the state constitutional amendment that passed Tuesday. More than a dozen counties that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election also voted against the proposal in the special election in August—an indication of cross-party enthusiasm for abortion rights. That optimism whipped up even more frenzy for the November election: The abortion rights coalition spent more than $26 million on getting the amendment passed, according to the New York Times. That was more than triple what the anti-abortion side spent.

But abortion rights advocates also had several factors working against them on Tuesday. For one, Ohioans had to vote for change rather than against it, which requires more active support for abortion from voters. For another, the language of the amendment was vague enough to leave room for misinformation and wild interpretations. (Also, confusingly, both the proposal in August and the vote in November were called “Issue 1.”)

The proposal, which needed a majority to pass, establishes “an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment,” as well as protections for people who help someone get an abortion. There wasn’t much specificity to the language beyond a ban on abortion bans (at least, until the point when a doctor considers a fetus viable) and a mandate that a woman be allowed an abortion at any point if her health is at risk. The official state guide to Tuesday’s ballot initiatives, published by the secretary of state, presented the arguments for and against Issue 1. The authors of the argument for it (mostly doctors, the group behind much of the initiative’s early drive) largely presented libertarian-style arguments about how voters should not want the government’s meddling in personal affairs “no matter how you feel about abortion personally.” But the authors of the argument against the amendment—mostly lawmakers—took the opportunity to warn about more imaginative dangers.

The amendment, conservative lawmakers wrote, would give power to for-profit abortion providers and subject women “to dangerous unregulated medical procedures” and “dismemberment abortions; painful, late-term abortions; and abortions after a child is born alive.” (The amendment’s language itself uses the term “unborn child” instead of fetus.) It would allow people to have abortions “because of the child’s sex, race, or disability,” opponents argued. And, they argued, it would tread on parental rights.

“Parental rights” is a term more often associated with LGBTQ panics and book banning in school than abortion. But, somewhat unusually, the opponents of Issue 1 emphasized it in their opposition, writing that the amendment would bar “parents from being involved in their child’s medical decisions, like an abortion or irreversible sex-change operations.” It would also keep parents “out of the most important decisions in their children’s lives, while allowing abortion promoters to pressure those children behind closed doors,” the lawmakers argued. The scaremongering over gender-affirming surgery was baseless; the proposed amendment had nothing to do with any medical issues other than reproductive care. And it didn’t sway the majority of voters anyway.

Right now, abortion is legal in Ohio until 22 weeks of pregnancy. Had the amendment failed, there was a risk that a previously imposed ban, now suspended under legal challenges, would restrict abortion to six weeks—before many women know they’re pregnant.

Now that’s off the table. The amendment will become effective in 30 days.